In his most recent book, Philip Pettit presents and defends a “republican” political philosophy that stems from a tradition that includes Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Madison. The book provides an interpretation of what is distinctive about republicanism—namely, Pettit claims, its notion of freedom as nondomination. He sketches the history of this notion, and he argues that it entails a unique justification of certain political arrangements and the virtues of citizenship that would make those arrangements possible. Of (...) historical and philosophical interest, he stresses, is the fundamental contrast between freedom as nondomination and slavery. Joseph Priestly, for instance, invoked this contrast in defending the cause of the American Revolution, and in 1769 declared, incredibly, that if the parliament of Great Britain continued to tax the American colonies, “the colonists will be reduced to a state of as complete servitude, as any people of which there is an account in history”. Those opposed to American independence, among them Jeremy Bentham, relied instead on a Hobbesian notion of freedom as noninterference, using it to argue that the colonists were no more interfered with by the British government than were citizens of Britain. Drawing out this contrast, Pettit aims to establish that a republican view of freedom better supports the institutions of a constitutional democracy than does liberalism. His account of the distinguishing characteristics and strengths of republicanism is, however, only partially successful. Neither his case that a republican notion of freedom provides for a more solid defense of democratic institutions and constitutional protections than is available within liberalism, nor his argument that republicanism can better address “private” injustices, is convincing. (shrink)
Hume’s moral philosophy is a sentiment-based view. Moral judgment is a matter of the passions; certain traits of character count as virtues or vices because of the approval or disapproval they evoke in us, feelings that express concern we have about the social effects of these traits. A sentiment-based approach is attractive, since morality seems fundamentally to involve caring for other people. Sentiment-based views, however, face a real challenge. It is clear that our affections are often particular; we favor certain (...) persons over others. This poses a problem when it comes to determining the proper content of morality. The ties of sentiment would seem to be in tension with the aspirations of morality toward impartiality and universality. (shrink)
Tommie Shelby argues that social injustice undermines the moral standing states would have, were they just, to condemn criminal wrongdoers. He makes a good argument, but he does not go far enough to reject the blaming function of punishment. Shelby’s argument from “impure dissent,” in particular, helps to demonstrate the limits of blame in criminal justice.
Moral condemnation has become the public narrative of our criminal justice practices, but the distribution of criminal sanctions is not and should not be guided by judgments of what individual wrongdoers morally deserve. Criteria for evaluating a person’s liability to criminal sanctions are general standards that are influenced by how we understand the relative social urgency and priority of reducing crimes of various types. These standards thus depend on considerations that are not a matter of individual moral desert. Furthermore, the (...) moral desert is doubtful when members of socially disadvantaged groups face unequal prospects for being subjected to criminal justice sanctions. Social injustice is an intolerable context for distributing punishment according to individual desert. A rightsprotectingscheme of criminal justice might permissibly burden individual offenders, but not as an expression of what they morally deserve. (shrink)
BackgroundMinorities are an underrepresented population in clinical trials. A potential explanation for this underrepresentation could be lack of willingness to participate. The aim of our study was to evaluate willingness to participate in different hypothetical clinical research scenarios and to evaluate the role that predictors could have on the willingness of minorities to participate in clinical research studies.MethodsWe conducted a mixed-methods study at the Miami VA Healthcare system and included primary care patients with hypertension. We measured willingness to participate as (...) a survey of four clinical research scenarios that evaluated common study designs encountered in clinical research and that differed in degree of complexity. Our qualitative portion included comments about the scenarios.ResultsWe included 123 patients with hypertension in our study. Of the entire sample, ninety-three patients were minorities. Seventy per cent of the minorities were willing to participate, compared to 60 per cent of the non-minorities. The odds ratio of willingness to participate in simple studies was 0.58; 95 per cent CI 0.18–1.88 p=0.37 and the OR of willingness to participate in complex studies was 5.8; 95 per cent CI 1.10–1.31 p=0.03. In complex studies, minorities with low health literacy cited obtaining benefits as the most common reason to be willing to participate. Minorities who were not willing to participate, cited fear of unintended outcomes as the main reason.ConclusionsMinorities were more likely to be willing to participate in complex studies compared to non-minorities. Low health literacy and therapeutic misconception are important mediators when considering willingness to participate in clinical research. (shrink)
In his most recent book, Philip Pettit presents and defends a “republican” political philosophy that stems from a tradition that includes Cicero, Machiavelli, James Harrington, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Madison. The book provides an interpretation of what is distinctive about republicanism—namely, Pettit claims, its notion of freedom as nondomination. He sketches the history of this notion, and he argues that it entails a unique justification of certain political arrangements and the virtues of citizenship that would make those arrangements possible. Of (...) historical and philosophical interest, he stresses, is the fundamental contrast between freedom as nondomination and slavery. Joseph Priestly, for instance, invoked this contrast in defending the cause of the American Revolution, and in 1769 declared, incredibly, that if the parliament of Great Britain continued to tax the American colonies, “the colonists will be reduced to a state of as complete servitude, as any people of which there is an account in history”. Those opposed to American independence, among them Jeremy Bentham, relied instead on a Hobbesian notion of freedom as noninterference, using it to argue that the colonists were no more interfered with by the British government than were citizens of Britain. Drawing out this contrast, Pettit aims to establish that a republican view of freedom better supports the institutions of a constitutional democracy than does liberalism. His account of the distinguishing characteristics and strengths of republicanism is, however, only partially successful. Neither his case that a republican notion of freedom provides for a more solid defense of democratic institutions and constitutional protections than is available within liberalism, nor his argument that republicanism can better address “private” injustices, is convincing. (shrink)
Recent moral philosophy has been characterized by some serious attempts to show that both Kantian and utilitarian moralities leave us with insufficient room to pursue our personal projects and relationships. These moralities have been charged with demanding a kind of impartiality that leaves us with too little space for developing ourselves and our friendships, family relations, communities, and nations in the ways best suited for us. Critics claim these theories implausibly maintain that if our personal relationships and affinities do not (...) further the ends of moral duty or maximum utility, they are of no value and hence we lack reason to devote ourselves to them. In what follows, I will assume that a conception of morality would indeed be implausible if it were to demand impartiality in the strong sense that it would be impermissible to favor our own projects and ambitions, to care especially about the welfare of certain persons rather than others, and sometimes to give preference to those we care most about, even when we could benefit strangers more. (shrink)
This article integrates research on gendered organizations and the work-family interface to investigate an innovative workplace initiative, the Results-Only Work Environment, implemented in the corporate headquarters of Best Buy, Inc. While flexible work policies common in other organizations “accommodate” individuals, this initiative attempts a broader and deeper critique of the organizational culture. We address two research questions: How does this initiative attempt to change the masculinized ideal worker norm? And what do women’s and men’s responses reveal about the persistent ways (...) that gender structures work and family life? Data demonstrate the ideal worker norm is pervasive and powerful, even as employees begin critically examining expectations regarding work time that have historically privileged men. Employees’ responses to ROWE are also gendered. Women are more enthusiastic, while men are more cautious. Ambivalence about and resistance to change is expressed in different ways depending on gender and occupational status. (shrink)
The symposiasts press from a number of directions. ErinKelly contends that Hume’s stability-based sentimentalist ethics cannot do justice to our considered normative moral judgements. Schmitt and Williams criticize my account of Hume’s epistemology proper. I will have to give ground: my book does overstate the extent to which Hume reaches a destructive result, in large part because I overlook significant variants of a stability account of justification. I make other concessions—in regard to the country gentlemen passage and (...) Hume’s 1.3.9 treatment of resemblance—but believe these have limited repercussions. (shrink)
A revised edition of John Rawls’s classic work A Theory of Justice has recently been published in English. The revisions appeared in the first foreign translation in 1975 and Rawls has made no further revisions to the text since that date, with the exception of a second preface, written for the French edition in 1987 and modestly revised in 1990. Changes are found on approximately 130 of the book’s 600 pages. Most are minor stylistic changes. About 25 percent of the (...) changes made are to some extent substantive. They do not alter the presentation of the central arguments significantly, but they do introduce some important new ideas. Replacement of the original by the revised edition is, of course, somewhat inconvenient, since the voluminous literature on Rawls refers to the page numbers in the original edition. Also, the new ideas presented in the revisions are more fully developed in Rawls’s later writings. Nevertheless, the emergence of several themes may deepen our understanding of his political philosophy. (shrink)
A revised edition of John Rawls’s classic work A Theory of Justice has recently been published in English. The revisions appeared in the first foreign translation in 1975 and Rawls has made no further revisions to the text since that date, with the exception of a second preface, written for the French edition in 1987 and modestly revised in 1990. Changes are found on approximately 130 of the book’s 600 pages. Most are minor stylistic changes. About 25 percent of the (...) changes made are to some extent substantive. They do not alter the presentation of the central arguments significantly, but they do introduce some important new ideas. Replacement of the original by the revised edition is, of course, somewhat inconvenient, since the voluminous literature on Rawls refers to the page numbers in the original edition. Also, the new ideas presented in the revisions are more fully developed in Rawls’s later writings. Nevertheless, the emergence of several themes may deepen our understanding of his political philosophy. (shrink)
Gideon Yaffe argues that children should be treated as less culpable by the criminal justice system because children have little political say over the law. I analyze several elements of Yaffe’s argument and express qualified agreement with his thesis. Though I reject the role he assigns to the notions of desert and legal reasons, I agree that people who lack political power are less accountable to the criminal justice system’s legal authorities.
Multiculturalism is not a flag that political philosophers seem eager to wave these days. Conservatives complain about the supposedly hazardous effects of the notion that non-Western societies have ideas and ways of life that are worthy enough to compete with those of Western societies for study and respect. Progressives worry that multiculturalism can be too uncritical of certain non-Western attitudes, especially about the nature and role of women. Perhaps this helps to explain why Hans Oberdiek is reluctant to associate his (...) views too closely with multiculturalism, despite endorsing an ideal of tolerance that is quite sympathetic to it. (shrink)
The Heart of Human Rights develops an account of human rights as legal entities that serve important moral purposes in a legitimate international human rights practice. This paper examines Allen Buchanan’s general concept of institutional legitimacy and aims to expand that concept by emphasizing its connection with several ideas developed in the book about the nature and function of a system of international human rights. When it incorporates those ideas, Buchanan’s ‘Metacoordination View’ can be seen to set a standard of (...) legitimacy not only for assessments of an international scheme of human rights institutions, but also for the basic institutional structures of domestic states. Furthermore, we can see how the nature and function of human rights in the international practice of human rights bears on legitimacy assessments of particular domestic institutions. (shrink)
Recent moral philosophy has been characterized by some serious attempts to show that both Kantian and utilitarian moralities leave us with insufficient room to pursue our personal projects and relationships. These moralities have been charged with demanding a kind of impartiality that leaves us with too little space for developing ourselves and our friendships, family relations, communities, and nations in the ways best suited for us. Critics claim these theories implausibly maintain that if our personal relationships and affinities do not (...) further the ends of moral duty or maximum utility, they are of no value and hence we lack reason to devote ourselves to them. In what follows, I will assume that a conception of morality would indeed be implausible if it were to demand impartiality in the strong sense that it would be impermissible to favor our own projects and ambitions, to care especially about the welfare of certain persons rather than others, and sometimes to give preference to those we care most about, even when we could benefit strangers more. (shrink)
The punitive, moralizing conception of individual responsibility commonly associated with retributive justice exaggerates the moral meaning of criminal guilt. Criminal guilt does not imply moral desert, nor does it justify moral blame. Mental illness, intellectual disability, addiction, immaturity, poverty, and racial oppression are factors that mitigate our sense of a wrongdoer’s moral desert, though they are mostly not treated by the criminal justice system as relevant to criminal culpability. The retributive theory also distracts from shared responsibility for social injustice. Instead (...) of highlighting the moral urgency of correcting conditions that help to explain the crime rate, a commitment to retribution diverts attention from the social conditions that engender crime. These conditions include an unequal distribution of social, economic, and political power, which poses a serious problem for the retributive theory. When disadvantaged members of society act in ways that violate the criminal law, they are less morally blameworthy, even when the laws they violate are justified. Judgments of blame and desert, in relation to criminal justice, vary in accordance with political status. The diminished political power of oppressed groups is at odds with a retributive justification of punishment. (shrink)
Liberal political philosophers have underestimated the philosophical relevance of historical injustice. For some groups, injustices from the past—particularly surrounding race, ethnicity, or religion—are a source of entrenched social inequality decades or even hundreds of years later. Rawls does not advocate the importance of redressing historical injustice, yet political liberalism needs a principle of historical redress. Rawls’s principle of fair equality of opportunity, which is designed to prevent the leveraging of class privilege, could be paired with a supporting principle of historical (...) redress that would contend with partiality and bias in open access to positions. (shrink)
ErinKelly’s The Limits of Blame presents a critique of our current overly-punitive legal system and champions a system of criminal justice that does not traffic in moral blame and is free of retributivist elements. This commentary questions the viability of such a system, and ultimately suggests that there is not much distance between a more perfect retributivist system and the kind of nuanced and humane system of criminal justice that Kelly envisions.
The study of responsibility in ethics focuses on the nature of agency, accountability, blame, punishment and, crucially, the distribution of responsibility for complex ethical problems. Work in social ontology examines the nature of entities such as groups, organizations, corporations, and institutions, and what it is for these entities to have intentional states and to act. Until recently, these fields of research have mostly been treated separately. The goal of this issue is to examine emerging research at their intersection. The papers (...) gathered here explore both normative dimensions of work in social ontology and metaphysical assumptions and implications of ethical theorizing about collective responsibility. (shrink)
In this introduction, we acquaint readers with a selection of work coming out of the "Bias in Context" conference series, which ran from 2016 to 2017. Featured authors in the symposium include Gabriella Beckles-Raymond (writing about bad faith and implicit bias explanations), Daniel Kelly and Lacey Davidson (writing about gender norms and the internalization of social structures), and Alex Madva (writing about solutions to racial integration and an empirical mindset). We sketch the larger themes of the conference, as well (...) as how these three pieces of work fit into them. (shrink)
This is a reply to Alex Guerrero’s, ErinKelly’s and Gabe Mendlow’s commentaries on Gideon Yaffe’s The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility. The reply focuses on their objections concerning the nature of legal reasons, desert, and the political arrangements that make a difference to criminal culpability.
For many years now Allen Buchanan has been one of the most important theorists working on the philosophy of human rights, producing a large number of papers and two books significantly devoted to the topic. In the work under consideration in this symposium, Buchanan breaks new ground by examining what he claims to be the “heart” of international human rights practice – the international legal human rights (“ILHR”) system, subjecting it to moral and philosophical analysis and criticism. Buchanan's book was (...) the subject of an author meets critics session sponsored by the APA Committee on Law and Philosophy at the 2015 Pacific APA Meeting. The following paper introduces the resulting special issue of the journal, _Law and Philosophy_, summarizing Buchanan's important contribution and criticisms by William Talbot, Brooke Ackerley, ErinKelly, and Mathias Risse, as well as Buchanan's replies. (shrink)
The massive disparity between the relative wealth of most citizens in affluent countries and the profound poverty of billions of people struggling elsewhere for survival is morally jolting. But why exactly is this disparity so outrageous and how should the citizens of affluent countries respond? Political philosopher, Thomas Pogge, has emerged as one of the world’s most ardent critics of global injustice which, he argues, is caused directly by the operation of a global institutional order that not only systematically disadvantages (...) poor countries but is imposed on them by precisely those wealthy, powerful countries that benefit the most from the order’s injustice. In allowing their governments to perpetrate this injustice, Pogge contends that citizens of the wealthy countries collude in a monumental crime against humanity. In this book Pogge’s challenging and controversial ideas are debated by leading political philosophers from a range of philosophical viewpoints. With a clear and informative introduction by Alison Jaggar, and original contributions from Neera Chandhoke, Jiwei Ci, Joshua Cohen, ErinKelly, Lionel McPherson, Charles W. Mills, Kok-Chor Tan, and Leif Wenar, this volume deepens and expands the debate over global justice and moral responsibility in the world today. (shrink)
ErinKelly’s The Limits of Blame offers a series of powerful arguments against retributivist accounts of punishment. Among these, I first focus on Kelly’s Inscrutability Argument, which casts doubt on our epistemic justification for making judgments of moral desert. I then discuss Kelly’s defense of the Just Harm Reduction account of punishment. I consider how retributivists might respond to and learn from these arguments.
Book synopsis: Today the majority of philosophers in the English-speaking world adhere to the “naturalist” credos that philosophy is continuous with science, and that the natural sciences provide a complete account of all that exists—whether human or nonhuman. The new faith says science, not man, is the measure of all things. However, there is a growing skepticism about the adequacy of this complacent orthodoxy. This volume presents a group of leading thinkers who criticize scientific naturalism not in the name of (...) some form of supernaturalism, but in order to defend a more inclusive or liberal naturalism. The many prominent Anglo-American philosophers appearing in this book—Akeel Bilgrami, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, John Dupré, Jennifer Hornsby, ErinKelly, John McDowell, Huw Price, Hilary Putnam, Carol Rovane, Barry Stroud, and Stephen White—do not march in lockstep, yet their contributions demonstrate mutual affinities and various unifying themes. Instead of attempting to force human nature into a restricted scientific image of the world, these papers represent an attempt to place human nature at the center of renewed—but still scientifically respectful—conceptions of philosophy and nature. (shrink)
Introduction to the symposium on the 25th anniversary of the publication of Rawls's Political Liberalism, including overviews of the contributions to the special issue.
